World Report

WARSAW (JTA) -- The governor of a southern Polish province has revoked permission for a disco to be built near the site of the Auschwitz death camp.

Tuesday's action came in response to protests that noise from the disco would disturb visitors to the site.

Local officials had previously given permission to open the disco in a building that once was a storage house for the Auschwitz camp.

New Zealand shul suffers shooting attack

SYDNEY (JTA) -- Assailants fired at least eight shots at the synagogue in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Rosh Hashanah eve in what was described as a deliberate anti-Semitic action.

Andrew Blitz, a member of the New Zealand Jewish Council, said that the 100-member Jewish community in Christchurch "is in shock.

Blitz added that "there is a significant problem with skinheads and other racists in Christchurch."

Torah scrolls moved out of Uzbekistan

MOSCOW (JTA) -- In a sign of warming relations between the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan and its once-large Jewish community, Jews from the Bukhara region have moved six Torah scrolls from Uzbekistan to North America.

Jewish leaders say this is the first time the Uzbek government gave permission for such a move.

The majority of the community left Uzbekistan in 1992 and 1993, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

New Bukharan synagogues are proliferating in North America and Israel, according to Boris Kandov, president of the newly formed Congress of Bukharan Jews in the United States and Canada.

Edith Stein honored as spiritual patroness

ROME (JTA) -- Pope John Paul II declared Edith Stein, a convert from Judaism killed at Auschwitz, as one of three female saints to be revered as spiritual "co-patroness of Europe."

The pope made the announcement, which may harm Jewish-Catholic relations, last Friday to underscore the role of women in Roman Catholic and European history.

The pope said he chose Stein, a German Jew who converted to Catholicism and became a nun before being killed at Auschwitz in 1942, because her life story "is the symbol of the dramas of Europe in this century."

Many Jews reacted angrily when the pope made Stein a saint last year, saying she had been rounded up and killed because of her Jewish identity, not because she was a nun.

Stein's niece, Susanne Batzdorff, lives in Santa Rosa.